180 Stopped Working

[CelGen]

I have an absolutely beautiful Powerbook 180 that I built about five years ago. 120mb hard drive, 14mb ram, modem card, good battery, back port cover is present and an LCD panel that even today takes a good five hours before the tunnel vision even starts to appear.

I've had it out for the past few days on the kitchen table doing various tasks and I left it yesterday to move some files to the server. When I came back it had locked up with a white bomb screen and no text. On reboot it started to boot, then bombed twice on the Finder and an illegal F-line instruction, then it started throwing random sad mac error codes, blowing chimes and after various power cycling and removing the battery I gave up and left it to sit for the night. By the morning it was booting again so I put it to sleep and left it there all day. his evening I wake it up and it bombs again, power cycle it and it boots but then locks solid again the moment I inserted a floppy disk. I reboot and the moment it starts reading from the floppy the machine sad macs with

0000000F
00007FFF
I opened the laptop up and it was still pristine inside as I had left it. Regardless I pulled it apart in verified all the connections and boards were not somehow corroded or damaged and found nothing. There is also no issues with the DC/DC section that I can clearly tell from the capacitors as it uses highly reliable metal film capacitors. In fact none of the logic boards use SMD lytics.

I'm at a loss. It's been flawless for years and never given me any trouble.

 

[unity]

Given how robust these are, have you thought about swapping the hard drive? I would say on that machine, its pretty much the weakest link when it comes to age. I have seen hard drives cause some pretty weird problems on the 68ks.

 

[Carboy7]

Could it have been the power source or connection?

 

[MikeatOSX]

Given how robust these are, have you thought about swapping the hard drive? I would say on that machine, its pretty much the weakest link when it comes to age. I have seen hard drives cause some pretty weird problems on the 68ks.

I agree. I own 3 PowerBooks 180c and also had problems with a hard drive. I replaced it with a CF PowerMonster II.

Also power supplies are getting weak.

 

[CelGen]

I saw the prices of solid state adapters when I first did the rebuild.

Then I looked in my pile of hard drives, because proper collectors don't throw useable parts away and SSD's are for squares.

The drive is fine. In the meantime I'm still poking at it.

 

[Johnnya101]

Found this.

"The '0000000f' means that the error code is "Reserved for Macintosh Compatibility" - not very helpful, but it also means that the second code could be a System Error, in which case the '00007fff' means 'General System Error'"

​I really have a feeling something is still wrong with the HD/system. I dont think that would explain the floppies not reading, but theres a chance. It might be so insignificant that it still works on other computers, but there might be something...

Have any others you can test?

 

[CelGen]

The drive was pulled, thrown into an external 2.5" SCSI hard drive enclosure (well that became oddly handy) and left for Snooper to run the rive over a few times in the hopes it hiccups. Nothing. The drive is nice and quiet, it's passing all tests. It's as flawless as it was when I initially refuebished it.

Also, the Powerbook is still blowing chimes and being overall unhappy even without the drive, so.......

 

[Macdrone]

did you try removing memory?  Added memory cards could go faulty.  

 

[CelGen]

It doesn't appear to be the ram either.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

Happen to have a spare power brick?

 

[Carboy7]

Happen to have a spare power brick?

You might be on to something... a power fluctuation could possibly have damaged some component.

 

[CelGen]

I was going to say I have several spare bricks but this afternoon I tried turning it on for the hell of it....and it booted fine. It's been behaving totally fine for the remainder of the afternoon and Snooper is currently set in a loop to run every test it can. No problems so far.

Weird.

 

[Johnnya101]

Thats great! Lets hope it stays like that!

 

[Carboy7]

Called it!

 

[techknight]

If it has a good battery it shouldnt matter. 

 

[CelGen]

Called it!

Called what? I have not switched power bricks yet.

 

[CelGen]

It's doing it again.

Also shut up about the power brick. the adapter is healthy enough that it will run the standalone battery charger so at the least here I'm running a HEALTHY battery.

 

[unity]

Ok, so on battery and no brick. I was going to ask if you had the proper 3.0amp brick as the 2.0amp will not run the 180 well.

 

[techknight]

It's probably the power brick.